In this post we focus on goats killed for food. First we consider goats slaughtered in the year 2016 and then we’ll look at trends over time (1961-2016). As noted in the overview, goats are far from the most commonly slaughtered animal for food, but the trend is on the rise. In total, more than 450 million goats were slaughtered for food in 2016 according to United Nations data. For animal advocates, we think it may be helpful to examine the geographic distribution of these slaughtered goats.

To get an idea of the current situation, below we provide an interactive global map of goat slaughter data from 2016, by country. Note that the legend shown is logarithmic to help with interpretation because the differences between countries is substantial. We also provide a table with the ten countries that slaughtered the most goats in 2016. Note that there is no goat slaughter data for the United States or Canada.

As for most other species of farmed animals, due to population size, China again topped the list of absolute animals slaughtered in 2016. For goats, China represented 36% of the worldwide numbers in 2016. Because China has such a large population, it is interesting to see if it is still in the top ten if we produce the same graph and table controlling for population size.

After controlling for population size, China now disappears from the top ten goat-killing countries! Interestingly, at the top of the list is Mongolia, one of the least populated countries in the world. The two countries that are in both top ten lists are Sudan and South Sudan, where consuming goat meat is very popular. These countries might be interesting focal points for advocates focused on goats.

Below are stacked area graphs for both the total and the per capita goat slaughter numbers. Note that we implicitly assume that people from the same continent are somehow culturally “similar” and therefore exhibit similar slaughter behaviour.

Measured by absolute goat slaughter numbers, Asia and Africa are the only continents that deserve much attention. Both Asia and Africa have increased their goat slaughter practices dramatically in the period from 1961 to 2016, whereas Europe slightly decreased goat killing. To get a more complete picture, we now also consider the per capita variant of this stacked area graph.

When viewing the same data on a per capita basis, Asia slaughters fewer goats than Africa and a comparable number to Oceania. All other regions consumer far fewer goats per person. Over time, the per capita goat slaughter numbers increased substantially in Asia and Oceania, stayed relatively stable for Africa, and decreased slightly in Europe and South America.

Note that Africa is in both stacked area graphs is a “big player” when it comes to killing goats for food, specifically. For animal advocates seeking to help goats, Africa may be a continent on which to focus future efforts.

In addition to the stacked area graphs, below we also include a table with the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for each region. This is a quick way to compare the trends between the continents. The CAGR is calculated as follows:

Bas Sanders is an econometrician with a strong passion for development economics. His main interests are data science, data visualization, and machine learning; all of which he tries to use for creating a better world. In his spare time, you can find him solving Project Euler puzzles, reading about Effective Altruism or climbing in the bouldering gym.